Tag: buffet table

Hello all! After going through Hurricane Matthew yesterday and being off of work today, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to finally write my first blog post!

I have been dreaming of this buffet station since we bought our dining room table. I knew exactly what I wanted: it had to be at least 5ft long, have drawers, glass doors, a somewhat coastal or farmhouse feel…and I knew it had to be blue/turquoise. I made daily trips to Home Goods and thrift shops…for over a year!! I was hoping to find either something that wasn’t too expensive OR something that I could refinish myself. I had my heart set on a cabinet I had seen several times at Home Goods. Of course, once I realized that it was what I wanted for my space, I would never see it again (in that color.)

On my lunch breaks & on my way home from work I would pop in and cross my fingers that they would have that turquoise cabinet. I was tempted several times to just purchase it in another color in hopes that it would look nice with our dining room table, but I never pulled the trigger. I wanted to have that “OMG THAT’S IT!!” or “I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT! feeling. As months went by, I started to give up. As the frustration began to build, I decided I needed to put my time and efforts into something else. I was worrying to much about it. My mom likes to say when I have something on my mind or like something too much, I just suck the life out of it. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not, but I guess you can say that it means that I’m determined & that I don’t give up easily.

So, in the mean time, I decided to start looking for a light fixture to put over the dining room table. After spending a few hours online”window shopping” for lights, I received a text message from one of my best friends (Afton) who knew exactly what I was looking for (in a buffet table.) She sends me this photo while she was shopping at Costco:

“Would this work?” she asked. I asked her what the dimensions were….”OMG, IT COULDN’T BE ANY MORE PERFECT!!” I replied. It was over 5ft long (72″ to be exact), had drawers AND glass doors, and feet!! I knew it when I saw it. It was the one. It was built much better than the one I had seen at Home Goods with ball bearing drawers and it weighed a ton! It was also only $50 more than the other one! Costco only wanted $450 for this piece and after doing my research I saw that it retailed for well over $1,000 on Wayfair. Like many of you, I like to have that feeling that I got a great deal! Oh, and did I mention Costco only had about four or five of these pieces!? I kept telling myself (1) Good things come to those who wait and (2) What’s meant to be will be. This was obviously meant to be!! So, here we are. The piece is out of the box and I just couldn’t stop staring at it.

Here is a good picture of our space before when we brought the buffet table home. Ryan and I were both so happy with it.

When I had decided on the idea of having a buffet table on that wall, I knew I wanted to have shelving above it to display some of our serving pieces, wine glasses, & our coffee cups. The cabinets in a kitchen were starting to seem pretty cramped because they’re very shallow and the way we had all of our cups & dishes organized just wasn’t working. I new I needed to spread things out. I wanted to place the items in there that were pretty but not used all of the time.

I had always liked the look of these open shelves with the large iron brackets. They were industrial, heavy, & had clean lines. I found them on Etsy from Tired Trucker Designs & placed an order in the powder coated bronze. His work is awesome if you have a chance to look at his shop!

There is no way that those brackets are coming off our wall! We had purchased the wood at Lowe’s a while ago. The stemware rack was unfinished wood and came with all the screws to attach it to the shelves (also bronze.) I just needed to find cup hooks in the right finish. I thought I wanted bronze, but I ended up going with cup hooks in antique brass from Home Depot because they matched the cabinet’s hardware. I couldn’t believe my vision was finally starting to come to life!

I had wanted to try Valspar’s Furniture Paint because it could be tinted. I had previously used chalk paint on another project but I couldn’t find the color I needed. I had a difficult time matching the paint color to the buffet. What I should have done was just taken one of the feet off of the cabinet for Lowe’s to color match it. I picked up several paint chips from Lowe’s & Sherwin Williams the past several times we stopped in. I thought I had found the perfect match with Sherwin William’s Vintage Vessel, but for some reason they couldn’t get the paint mixed in that color so the next best thing was Salt Marshes.

I wasn’t happy with the color. It was much too light. I had also tried using Valspar’s Antiquing Glaze, but I just thought my application made it look dirty. I was just over all disappointed with how it had turned out so far. I also didn’t care for the raw edges of the wood on the sides. It just didn’t look finished.

After taking a break to figure out how I wanted to move forward, I made two decisions. (1) I wanted to add decorative molding to the front and sides creating more of a finished look. (2) Now was the time to try Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint. I had my eye on the color Kitchen Scale. I also had watched (all) her tutorial videos (she’s my Blog IDOL) & saw how you could easily mix the paints together to make custom colors at home. I had ordered a small 30 gram packet of Kitchen Scale from Amazon (I would die without Amazon Prime.) One night after work (I think it was Monday) I tested it on a scrap piece of wood to see how the color would match. It seemed to be a perfect match!

I had seen that the paint line carried what they call a “Bonding Agent“, which is a type of glue that makes the milk paint adhere to a surface that is not porous (a previously painted surface). Since I had already painted the shelves with the Valspar furniture paint I needed to mix it with the milk paint. If I had just painted the raw wood with milk paint at first I wouldn’t have needed the bonding agent. If I didn’t use it, I would have had the chippy look which I do like, but for this project it was not the look I was going for. So here I am Tuesday morning at work playing on Amazon (that ADD..) & I ordered the bonding agent one more bag of Kitchen Scale paint…should be here Thursday after work. Perfect.

Here we are on Tuesday night having dinner and we hear that Hurricane Matthew may be coming in our direction. Great. Another “hurricane.” Shouldn’t be that bad, right?? Well, it’s Wednesday afternoon & we girls at work are starting to freak out a little & we’re wondering if the office and schools are going to be closed. My first and ONLY thought…what about my Amazon delivery?! If they close the schools…that means the mail won’t be running. What the heck am I supposed to do with no power to keep myself busy?!! …My safety is not my first thought….it’s my PAINT! What’s wrong with me?! So next thing I know, I’m looking up the closest retail location that carries it. The closest location is in Jupiter, about 10 miles away from my house, but almost 40 from my office (I have quite the work commute but I try not to complain). So what I’m thinking to my self is, how the heck am I going to make it to the shop in time to get my paint? Their hours are 9-5 and I usually don’t get home from work until almost 6. Luckily, since everything was shutting down and the office let us leave early to prep for this hurricane, I shot straight up the highway to Gus & Max’s in Jupiter. My husband’s only instruction was to pick up enough food for us to eat during the storm. I’m thinking okay, I got this. I’ll go get the paint first and then hopefully all the food won’t be sold out. I can’t let him know that I put our shelves before our stomach’s. I gotta get in and out! No dilly-dallying!! So I make it to the shop & I walk in; this place is beautiful! I felt like I walked into a decorator’s candy land. There were all these beautifully painted pieces of furniture, slip covered chairs, home décor, & shelves full of beautiful paint colors! I was in heaven (cue angels singing!!). The staff was an absolute delight! We were chatting…I felt like I had already known them for years! Here I am, getting side tracked. We have a hurricane coming (a Cat 4, might I add), & I’m in a home décor shop. Again, what is wrong with me?! Okay, time to go (but I’ll be back!) and get food at Publix!

Moving on….talk about getting off track!

I got the paint, the bonding agent, AND I got the food! We’re good to go! Bring on the hurricane…now that I can keep busy and finish this project! My husband thinks I’m nuts (sometimes). I tell him if he wanted a boring life he should’ve married somebody else. LOL

So moving on. . What I didn’t say above was that Patti from Gus & Max gave me a little sample of the color Ironstone to help me lighten the blue, in case Kitchen Scale on one large piece was too dark. So here we are on Wednesday night, & I’m just ready to paint!! I’m not waiting for the power to go out, so I mix the paint (I used my KitchenAid Mixer) & I added a little but of Ironstone. I didn’t want to use too much because I was afraid of making it too light. Clearly, I didn’t use enough because once the shelves dried they were WAY too dark! I was so bummed…AND frustrated!! This is the second time the paint didn’t work out! I tried to tell myself not to worry about it & I would try again in the morning.

So here we are on Thursday morning ready for this hurricane to come through & I’m ready to paint & get this project done once & for all! This time, instead of starting with Kitchen Scale I decided to start with Ironstone. I thought it would be easier to start out light and keep adding the blue until it was darker enough. Let me tell you, that was the way to go! Once I painted all the pieces for the wine rack (I completely unscrewed it and painted each piece) & the two shelves, I let it sit for 30-45 minutes to dry. After that, I added a thin coat of Miss Mustard Seed’s Furniture Wax. I let that set for a few minutes, and then buffed it out with a recommended lint-free microfiber cloth.

Now that the shelves were painted & waxed, I reassembled the wine rack & attached it to the bottom shelf. Then for the LAST touch… installing the cup hooks! This was something that Ryan offered to help me with. We added six hooks, two rows of three. I was excited to display my coffee cups that I had purchased at Z Gallerie a few years ago because the design on the front is so similar to the doors on the cabinet. That’s it! She’s done!!

At the end of all of this, it may have taken a hurricane to give me the time to finish this beauty, but I’m SO happy that I can check this off my list (along with this first post!) Luckily, in regards to the storm all we had was a little bit of roof damage over our garage (from a tree splitting), but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed. It was supposed to be much worse. You can always rebuild your home but you can’t rebuild a life. Thank you for reading this (long) post. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it!!

I would love to hear your comments & what projects you’re currently working on! Thank you so much for visiting!